Negative feedback on Almea?

[Aszev]

Have you ever got any negative response to Almea or your langs? By that I mean like hate-mails and not just critique in the sense of opinions on details and such.

[Soap]

I'd be interested to see this too.

[Ghost]

I'm sure all the old members recall that eurocentricism business.

Ahem.

Zak

[Aurora Rossa]

I've offered criticism, before.

[Drydic]

And it caused nothing but trouble. This is one of those issues that's best to not bring up.

[Bryan]

I'm sure Mark can take constructve criticism.

[brandrinn]

I'm sure Mark can take constructve criticism.

i guess i'll start:

the ocean currents around Erelae have always bugged the hell out of me. a powerful warm current east of Qarau may keep Feinae and (to a lesser extent) Skouras warm, the Jeor sea (is that what its called) would receive little warmth, and Gurdago next to none- this last is very upsetting, because Gurdago would need the Grandmother of all warm currents to support the large urban population it sustains throughout most of its history- its farther north than Archangel and Sami territory, and about as far from the Qarau current as those places are from the gulf stream. virtually all of Gurdagos food would need to be imported (but only during the summer, because the harbour would be frozen almost all year long). how on earth could Gurdago grow to support such a large urban population? the only explanation offered is that it, too, has a warm current (which must be an offshoot of the Qarau current), but ocean currents are circuits- where does that current go? as far as i can tell, this "Gurdago current" is physically impossible, based on the topography, trade winds, and existing ocean currents of that part of the planet.

Gurdago should be a frozen wasteland incapable of supporting a significant human population. at such a level of technology as the early Skourene had, i dont see how a large city could possibly have arisen there.

[alice]

Mark already knows about this, but I did notice that the climate of Verduria is more likely to be Cfa (Maritime east coast) than Cfb (Mediterranean).

[zompist]

Hey, geology isn't my strong suit. For what it's worth, Almea is probably a bit warmer than present-day Earth. (As well, Gurdago really can't support a huge city on its own resources; that's why it's had one empire after another.)

I think I've only gotten one real angry e-mail about Verduria. Most people seem sane enough not to waste time writing letters to complain about not liking something no one's making them read.

[Aszev]

I think I've only gotten one real angry e-mail about Verduria.

May I ask what it was about in general?

[con quesa]

I've mentioned before that I really dislike how Cadhinor and its descendants were purposely based off of European languages. It ruins the suspension of disbelief, in my opinion.

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I've mentioned before that I really dislike how Cadhinor and its descendants were purposely based off of European languages. It ruins the suspension of disbelief, in my opinion.

I don't see why. It's hardly uncommon for fantasy worlds to riff on familiar terrestrial cultures and languages in some way -- IMHO Almea does it better than many.

We did have a thread on the Zone of Fire a while ago, which is the only part of Almeology that tends to leave me cold (ahem). But it's hardly hate-mail worthy. Frankly I'm amazed that Mark's gotten even one such e-mail.

[zompist]

I think I've only gotten one real angry e-mail about Verduria.

May I ask what it was about in general?

You can ask, but it wasn't about anything at all-- that's what made it hate mail.

[brandrinn]

given the astonishing talent and effort that goes into Almea, any flaws are like a single fat cell on a super model. but its true that climatology does seem to be one area of "ad hoc" construction: "i need a warm climate here, so 'abracadabra'!" (am i using "ad hoc" correctly?)

we could probably pick out a few more flaws, like the inactivity in Qarau, which is blamed on its climate- i find this a bit of a stretch, but again, Almea is such an achievement that this is no big deal to anyone but the biggest anal retentive, like me. another thing thats been bugging me for a while is the zone of fire (which seems to steam some other folks as well). how do the Nanese survive? how did this zone get there in the first place(it seems to be a recent phenomenon)? also, as someone noted, Verduria's climate could not possibly be mediterranean: at that latitude, it would need more land to the north east to block the moist ocean winds- most likely it would have a climate like my city, Atlanta, which fits better, i think, given the proximity of the rau jungle.

[Salmoneus]

I don't like the loanwords from european languages. Also, the other races, wic strike me mainly as too startrekky/d&dish. particularly the wole evil empire of the ktuvok thing. But, each to their own.

[Aurora Rossa]

I don't like the loanwords from european languages. Also, the other races, wic strike me mainly as too startrekky/d&dish. particularly the wole evil empire of the ktuvok thing. But, each to their own.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I think the whole 5 races thing was a bad idea, really. I would have stuck with one or two races and I would have made them alien, really alien, if they are going to be on a totally different planet and such.

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I don't like the loanwords from european languages. Also, the other races, wic strike me mainly as too startrekky/d&dish.

It is worth keeping in mind that the whole thing started out as a D&D campaign world...

[brandrinn]

It is worth keeping in mind that the whole thing started out as a D&D campaign world...

this makes the dwarves, elves, goblins/whatever-the-Icelani-are, and one-dimentional Mordor/Munkhash forgivable, and Eastern is Almean PIE on purpose, but that climatology still bugs the heck out of me, and the wizards and such should probably have been abandoned once Mark decided to evolve Almea from a D&D realm to a serious historical setting...

i mean, the historical atlas reads great until some greeks get magically transported to Erelae- the believability takes a swift kick to the nads at that point.

[So Haleza Grise]

I don't like the loanwords from european languages. Also, the other races, wic strike me mainly as too startrekky/d&dish. particularly the wole evil empire of the ktuvok thing. But, each to their own.

You took the words right out of my mouth. I think the whole 5 races thing was a bad idea, really. I would have stuck with one or two races and I would have made them alien, really alien, if they are going to be on a totally different planet and such.

A couple of points to recognise here:

- What defines "really alien"? The trouble is the more unhuman ways you think up of doing things, the greater the risk you run of violating plausability and suspension of disbelief. Besides, we haven't had detailed material on say, iliu society yet, but it sounds pretty foreign to me. It seems to me that unless someone can find a "really alien" race that's developed in (more) detail, this criticism is a little unfair. As compared to classic fantasy of all types, Almean races are significantly less human than anything I tend to run into.

- Fantasy is a genre and has its own conventions. One of these is multiple races. Of course fantasy exists without multiple races. But I think one of the reaons that convention is popular is the ability it gives to authors to play around with different features (frankly, fantasy humans, left to their own devices, are a bit unengaging). And, as stated before, Almean races have their own ecological basis for the way they are, something that is hardly typical of fantasy races. It surprises me that people talk about black/white "evil" ktuvoks when they're absolutely not - it makes no sense at all to talk about them as evil, they just have a different (alien, if you will) perspective. This will be a big potential problem when we're ever coming across other sentients, IMHO.

- The "too European" criticism has been gone over in detail before and is really tiresome. All conlang creators use models. Some take large amounts of vocab, some don't. Some take vocab from languages likely to be familiar to their readers, others don't. I don't understand the idea that if Zomp were to base Erelaen languages on say, Finno-Ugric ones, it would somehow make Almea a better conworld.

- "believability?" If you want to create a conworld in a past historical period entirely without magic, nobody's stopping you. Once again, Zomp's writing in a genre, and using that genre's conventions. But the thing to note is that the use of magic is internally consistent, again a big step up from most fantasy settings. Criticisms of magic and multiple races would to me appear to be more general criticisms of fantasy rather than this specific conworld, which is atypical fantasy in many ways.

[brandrinn]

the use of magic is internally consistent, again a big step up from most fantasy settings.

i disagree. magic plays virtually no role whatsoever in everyday society, yet it is powerful enough to transport people from one planet to another. wizards pop up only when they are relevant to politics (i can think of only two- one that f*cked up Verdurian history, and one that f*cked up Chey history). what are they doing the rest of the time? how can they trasnport people across lightyears of space, but they cant do anything else, which would certainly have revolutionized society and thus appear in the historical atlas. it seems to me that magic shows up only when dramatically convenient for mr. Rosenfelder. i say get rid of it entirely. replace the wizards with "crazy old cooks," and replace the Greeks with Almeans with a Christian religion (if he can have Eastern be much like PIE, he can develop an Almean cult that resembles Christianity).

but of course, these are simply my humble musings.

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i mean, the historical atlas reads great until some greeks get magically transported to Erelae- the believability takes a swift kick to the nads at that point.

I see what you're saying, but I guess I'm just not as bothered by it. To me, there's something pleasantly C.S. Lewis about the whole idea of the Miracle of the Translation, even if it is a touch incongruous with the more realistic aspects of the setting.

And I actually think it's really unjust to accuse Mark of letting dramatic convenience govern his use of magic in the setting. He does explain in some detail how magic actually works and what its limits are, and I think his solution for incorporating it into the setting -- by treating it as something too unpredictable to use as a technology -- makes its less visible role in Almean macro-history perfectly sensible. (Because of that unpredictability, it seems just as likely that Utu and Utu-on came to power by good old-fashioned political skullduggery as anything else.)

Finally, it's worth remembering that the Almean setting, and particular magic as a part of it, is leavened with a good deal of quirky humour. Trying to work out what the "real" implications of, say, Improbaballistics in the conworld should be rather misses the point.

[zompist]

wizards pop up only when they are relevant to politics

Um. Yes. Goats, ironworkers, and parliamentary subcommittees also only pop up when they're relevant to politics. It's because the Atlas is about politics.

Or to be precise, it's a historical atlas. As such it focusses on things that can be expressed by maps over time. I was just re-reading Colin McEvedy's North American atlas last night... it covers the entire period from 1870 to the present in one map, and that is mostly concerned with when territories became states. Is that a reasonable treatment of US history over the last century? No, but that's not the purpose was. It is a reasonable explanation of how the map for 1870 differs from that for the present day.

Wizards don't come up much in the Atlas because wizards aren't very important in Almean historical geography. You're welcome to create a conworld where wizards are political overlords, but I don't think it makes much sense to demand that everyone else do so.

how can they trasnport people across lightyears of space, but they cant do anything else, which would certainly have revolutionized society

To our knowledge, they can't transport people across light-years of space. Since they can't do it, it doesn't revolutionize society. You're basing a lot on one rather facetious story, which nonetheless makes the point that transfer across dimensions is unreliable.

I suspect you're expecting Almea to follow some modern treatments of fantasy, which take a fairly standard medieval society and add in powerful wizards with reliable superpowers. That's precisely what I'm not doing, because I consider it a cheat. Powerful, reliable magic would transform society: a 'real' D&D world, for instance, would simply use Light spells for streetlights, use sorcerors in place of artillery, establish FedEx using teleportation.... In short, it'd be a type of science fiction world.

Since it's clear that Almea does have an Earthlike progression of technology and society, something's wrong with this picture, and it's precisely the expectation that Almean magic is powerful and reliable. In fact it's either powerful and unreliable, or bits of it are powerful but not in ways the larger world can exploit.

I also have to remind people that you're seeing all the most prosaic bits of the world-creation-- the analogue to the appendices to LOTR. I happen to enjoy doing that stuff, and I write about it in a pseudo-scholastic way, but it does give a somewhat unfair picture of Almea. If I were posting more stories, you'd see more of the magical and spiritual elements.

[brandrinn]

Wizards don't come up much in the Atlas because wizards aren't very important in Almean historical geography.

um... how could they not be? nobody said Almea has to be exactly like Middle Earth, but damn, if they can transport people through space, there's got to be something more practical they can do (however unreliable), and that would cause the rise and fall of civilizations.

also, how can you say "to our knowledge they cant transport people through space"??? clearly they did.

mind you, im not trying to be difficult, im playing devil's advocate because i just cant let anything rest, even for a second, if it strikes me as inconsistent. it is in no way a criticism of the entire Almean project, which i adore.

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also, how can you say "to our knowledge they cant transport people through space"??? clearly they did.

When?

[con quesa]

Wizards don't come up much in the Atlas because wizards aren't very important in Almean historical geography.

um... how could they not be? nobody said Almea has to be exactly like Middle Earth, but damn, if they can transport people through space, there's got to be something more practical they can do (however unreliable), and that would cause the rise and fall of civilizations.

As I understand it, the wizards easily could alter the rise and fall of civilizations and install themselves as all-powerful dictators if they wanted to. However, the very process of becoming a powerful wizard causes him/her to spend all their energies interacting with the vyoži. So they devote themselves entirely to them that the wizards would view using magic to conquer a country as beneath them.